Health care takeover quickly reveals issues

January 10, 2014

For those of us who find the government takeover of health care unsettling in the first place, it is a nightmare come true to see ongoing problems with the Obamacare website at the federal level and fresh news this week about the troubled MNsure site.

Since startup, the MNsure site has seen troubling issues: problems transferring information to insurers; glitches in processing applications; erroneous calculations of tax credits and coverage eligibility; and security problems.

And, sure enough, as problems on the website grew, people began calling in to complain or get help. So the MNsure call center became overloaded, creating wait times of up to two hours. Yuck.

This week, it was revealed that some MNsure customers will not be able to finalize coverage ahead of a March 31 deadline to do so, because of the website problems. Instead, they will have to fill out paper applications. This is embarrassing for MNsure, the state and the private vendors that helped create the website.

It also will surely elicit some shrugs around the state. Government does not do well in many areas of our lives, yet people keep turning to it to supposedly resolve problems. Which instead seem to grow with government involvement.

At the very least, government needs to do better. It sometimes seems nearly unaccountable. Ideally, our society would stop turning to government in every instance to mitigate life's hazards. Better personal decisions along with charitable incentives would go further in doing good.